Politics

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Gunmen have abducted four Indonesian sailors and shot and wounded one crew member on the high seas off the east coast of Malaysia’s Sabah state, waters where Abu Sayyaf militants are known to operate, a senior police official said on Saturday. If the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf is confirmed to be behind the kidnapping off Borneo, ...

Istanbul / AFP Turkish President RecepTayyipErdogan on Thursday urged dozens of heads of state and government gathered for an Islamic summit in Istanbul to end sectarian divisions in the Muslim world and fight terror together. Turkey is seeking to showcase its influence among the world’s estimated 1.7 billion Muslims, particularly in lands once controlled by the Ottoman Empire, at the ...

  Tripoli / AFP The ambassadors of Britain, France and Spain arrived in the Libyan capital on Thursday to support the new unity government seeking to end the country’s turmoil. It is the first visit by the European envoys to Tripoli since European Union member states decided to close their embassies in mid-2014 because of unrest. French ambassador Antoine Sivan, British ...

  Beirut/ AP IS group extremists have seized a string of opposition-held villages in Syria’s Aleppo province near the Turkish border, a monitoring group said on Thursday. Areas around Aleppo have seen a spike in violence on several fronts in recent days, sparking concern over a fragile six-week truce as a new round of peace talks gets under way in Geneva. ...

  ATHENS / AP Greece’s military is carrying out unscheduled exercises along the country’s northern borders, with fighter jets flying over an informal tent city of 11,000 migrants next to the border with Macedonia. Greek military officials say the drills, which foresee activation of rapid-response ground units and aircraft, as well as air defense units in parts of the eastern Aegean ...

  MANILA / AP In a military buildup certain to inflame tensions with China, the United States said on Thursday it will be conducting joint South China Sea patrols — and eventually air patrols — with the Philippines, while dispatching US troops and combat aircraft there on more frequent rotations. The announcement by Defense Secretary Ash Carter was the first ...

  RIO DE JANEIRO / AP President Dilma Rousseff’s chances of surviving impeachment are growing slimmer now that three parties have decamped from her governing coalition in 24 hours and Brazilian legislators begin preparing for a crucial vote on the question expected this weekend. The pullouts of the mid-size centrist parties caused despondency among members of Rousseff’ left-leaning Workers’ Party ...

Seoul / AFP South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s ruling conservative party was reeling on Thursday from a shock electoral defeat that broke its 16-year parliamentary majority and threatened its chances of retaining the presidential Blue House in 2017. Voters punished the party for its economic record, analysts said, with high levels of youth unemployment accounting for particularly high dissatisfaction among ...

Washington / AFP A Russian military jet came within 30 feet of a US destroyer in international waters in the Baltic Sea, US officials say, but Russia on Thursday defended the maneuver as safe. Russian aircraft repeatedly buzzed the USS Donald Cook this week, including an incident on Tuesday in which a Russian Su-24 flew 30 feet (nine meters) above ...

  Khost / AFP The US military has said it will investigate air strikes it carried out this month, which Kabul said had killed 17 “insurgents” but which local officials and witnesses said on Thursday were civilians. The US army regularly conducts air strikes in the name of “counter-terror” operations in the eastern regions that border Pakistan, which are strongholds of ...